At the very least, there might be a _very_ secure backup in the form of Aimee. For some reason I’d thought it had been said that she was a complete copy of Nick, with a few post-copy tweaks, but the only place I thought that occurred (http://skin-horse.com/comic/he-heard/) didn’t say it quite that way. Still… here’s hoping.

Aimee is a separate AI based on Nick. So it’s doubtful she has any of his memories since he was developed into a helicopter, since that’s when they would have scanned his brain. And certainly not memories of the scanned files, since they happened after she was developed.

Gavotte didn’t seem very happy at all when Nick was “given” to Skin Horse, so I don’t know that she was hiding him from anything or anyone. Plus, as far as we know, she’s been out of the picture since the fire. And given that Mr. Green – aka Goldbug – aka Violet Bee – etc. – was the one who broke Nick out of the homunculus program, precipitating his transfer to Skin Horse, it seems that it was his plan all along to have Nick there and available (and loaded up with all of SH’s files – detailing ALL of the non-humans they’ve EVER worked with) when the time was right.

Of course, we’re still not sure if Gavotte was working for or against Mr. Green, so we still don’t know why she had been collecting the fusion reactors. Then again, she IS a swarm of bees, which goes along with the names Goldbug and Violet Bee, so she and Ira may be working together after all.

But it brings up an interesting question… Since Nick employed Ira to deliver his “Secret Santa” gift to Virginia, he obviously knew about Ira’s military past, so it stands to reason that Nick has full detailed records on Ira’s past and present — including any network traffic, phone records, etc., while he was at Annex One. And yet Nick has never reported him for any questionable activity. So why would Ira need to shut him down? Nick might have been willing to help him, since Nick hates pretty much everyone anyway. The only reason I can think of is to prevent Nick from knowing where they are going. Sort of the equivalent of chloroforming a human.

I hate to break it to you, but the Violet drone made the same sound when Virginia shut her down. The difference is that Violet was being operated remotely, so it was only a machine that was being shut down. Nick has an organic brain inside the machine, so it is still possible that his brain is fine. And I hope that it is also possible that his brain can restart the machine — preferably after having removed the shutdown phrase from his command structure. (Of course, if he can manage that, he’ll probably also remove the swear filter, so if he starts swearing in a minute, that should be a good sign.)